What Should Obama's Priority be After Inauguration?

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I hope that as he takes office President Obama will simply consider what has made America unique: liberty. The world is a pretty sorry place overall, which is why immigrants have always come to the United States: to escape tyranny and chaos and to be free. Throughout history, societies have failed for two reasons: because they became centralized or because they became fragmented. America has thrived—and may continue to thrive—because our unity is based upon our liberty: of the individual, of families, of communities, and of the states. The idea has always been that the roiling, boisterous engine of democracy could rumble on at its best in an environment where power is devolved to the people—not where it is concentrated, centralized in the national government. Every day some 300-million free people make some billions of decisions not directed by anything other than their interests—including self-interest—and their passions, and out of all these interactions emerge quality and diversification and economy such as no handful of legislators, judges, and executives can ever achieve. In a time of crisis such as we are living through just now, there is a great temptation to empower the central authority in ways that our Founders and our Constitution sought to circumvent.

During the campaign and in the lead up to the Inauguration, Mr. Obama has seemed to indicate that only the national government can solve the problem—especially the economic problem—we face. In a speech on January 8, 2009, the President Elect said:

“Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy . . .”

I believe this is wrong, and I believe that the actions Mr. Obama will take as President to enforce that opinion—well-intentioned though they may be—will possibly prolong the economic downturn and will certainly increase the scope of the national government’s authority, which is already vast and frightening. Government ought to be powerful where its action is appropriate, but as it moves into areas, such as the economy, where its actions are inappropriate, it becomes not a cure, as Mr. Obama suggests, but a cancer, its metastases spreading throughout the body politic. If we do not stop government’s seemingly inevitable growth soon, it will spread into every organ of democracy, with the gravest-possible consequences.

I hope President Obama will look out the window behind his desk in the Oval Office and realize that the congressmen, presidential aides, and federal bureaucrats who work in Washington cannot effectively or efficiently run businesses in Michigan or manage schools in Ohio. This is what I hope, although I am not very hopeful.